It is well-known to convey articles on a high-speed conveyor subsequent to the manufacture of the articles. It is also well-known to inspect such articles as they pass by an inspection station located adjacent the high-speed conveyor.
In the case of glass bottles, for instance, the bottles are commonly formed in a bottle manufacturing machine, also commonly referred to in the industry as an "I.S. machine". A typical I.S. machine includes a plurality of bottle mold cavities which serve to form the bottles from molten or semi-molten glass. After being formed in the mold cavities of the I.S. machine, the bottles are generally transferred to an adjacent conveyor for transport to other bottle production areas. An inspection station which may, for example, comprise a bottle imaging system, may then be used to analyze the bottles being conveyed along the conveyor for dimensional attributes and/or for flaws which may exist in the bottles.
Examples of such imaging inspection systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. 5,437,702 of Burns et al.; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/914,984 of Philip J. Lucas for HOT BOTTLE INSPECTION APPARATUS AND METHOD filed Aug. 20, 1997; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/526,897 of Philip J. Lucas for HOT BOTTLE INSPECTION APPARATUS AND METHOD filed Sep. 12, 1995; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/509,049, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,734,467, of Philip J. Lucas for HOT BOTTLE INSPECTION APPARATUS AND METHOD filed Jul. 31, 1995 and in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/000,808 of Philip J. Lucas for METHOD FOR INSPECTING TRANSLUCENT OBJECTS USING IMAGING TECHNIQUES, filed Dec. 30, 1997, the disclosures of which are all hereby incorporated by reference for all that is contained therein.
It is generally desirable to correlate each bottle inspected by the inspection station to the particular mold cavity within the I.S. machine that formed the bottle. In this manner, when a defect is detected by the inspection station, the mold cavity which formed the defective bottle may be determined and the mold cavity may then be repaired or replaced as appropriate.
In order to determine the mold cavity of origin for a bottle being inspected, it is first generally necessary to determine the timing of the I.S. machine. Prior inspection devices typically determine timing by using a mechanical detection device which sends a pulse signal to the inspection system, or to a remote computer attached thereto, each time that the bottle manufacturing machine complete a cycle. The use of a mechanical detection device is disadvantageous in that such mechanical detection devices generally require mechanical interaction with a moving part or parts of the bottle production machine and, thus, are subjected to mechanical wear. Because a mechanical detection device represents an additional component of the inspection system, the use of a mechanical detection device also adds to the expense of the overall inspection system.
Another problem with prior inspection systems involves the methodology used to correlate the inspected bottles to their respective mold cavities of origin within the I.S. machine. Typical inspection systems count the bottles which arrive at the inspection station. The bottle count, relative to the timing of the new cycle pulse signal described above, can generally be correlated to the mold cavity of origin of the bottle being inspected. A problem with this method is that bottles sometimes fall down or are missing from the conveyor. A fallen or missing bottle will not be counted in the bottle count and, thus, will cause the wrong mold cavity of origin to be assigned to bottles arriving at the inspection station subsequent to the fallen or missing bottle.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a bottle inspection system and method which overcomes the problems associated with the prior art as generally described above.